I take the joke. Years ago I've read somme very interesting books about synergy - that time that word didn't be a part of economics yet. It just had been rised from mathematics, physics, engineering, informatics (Neuronal Nets) and the like. That time economics just was slowly detecting the word synergy, the theory of synergy and synergy effects.

Some of the examples for what synergy is - in the books I read - was the growth of crystals. So from my point of view synergy should be a naturally aspect of construction concepts of spacecrafts as well as of other technical things - it's admitting savings in material, propellant, engineering time and more.

In space exploration in general NASA and other could have made very much more use of synergy than they really did. ESA has been forced to make use of synergy forced by real circumstances - and reached significant savings concerning the costs of its projects by reusability. There are more possibilities than ESA is using right now but it has made a beginning.

But private teams like those competing for the XPRIZE are forced much stronger and earlier - and are lead to great success as we are going to see.

Perhaps in the XPRIZE CUP competition some teams will decide to join to make use of synergy potentials leading to increasing chances to win - especially after not winning the XPRIZE.

Why not - it doesn't mean to give up, it does meen to cooperate and to prohibit the invention of the wheel twice.

Up to significant amount the competition should be one of different concepts instead of one of different teams adopting the same concept or very similar concepts.

Surely - it should be a competition of the teams themselves too: in aspects as economical effiency as quality of organization, ressources and making as much use of them as possible, methods of working an designing, hire persons having the best ideas possible.

All of this contains synergy potentials as a relevant source of the success of private spacecrafts and the XPRIZE.

May be in general - but I have especially two teams in mind: The Da Vinci Project and ILAT, the isrealian team.

Each of these both teams is planning to launch its spacecraft form a balloon. The differences are very small - altitude I know, material I suppose as like as producers.

Competition for the XPRIZE between Da Vinci and ILAT makes sense because of the amount of 10,000,000.00 $ as well as the search for the most proper altitude, material etc. and the environmental differences between Isreal and the place Da Vinci Project ist working.

But for the CUP any no amount of cash to win is known yet - only that there will be cash prizes to win has been announced. It will be much less than 10,000,000.00 $. If none of both teams will win the XPRIZE, they should find an agreement on altitude, material, place and producer and join theier financial, organizational and technical resources to form one stronger team.

This way the CUP would be more interesting too as in the case of both teams giving up.

Among the 26 teams listed by the XPRIZE Foundation there some more adopting similar concepts but these concepts are more complex making it difficult to compare for me.

I've tried to evaluate the similarities between the concepts of the 27 teams. May be the details is not satisfying but a first step to estimate chances of synergy-effects, cooperations and chances to join forces after one team has won the XPRIZE and further efforts have to be CUP-oriented.

Here the results - duplicates are due to lack of informations:

A. There are 9 launch-concepts:

2 degrees of vertical from ocean going barge or ship
Balloon
Air Towed Launch from a 747
Horizontal
Horizontal on runway (1st stage); Air launch (2nd stage)
Vertical from ground
Vertical
Vertical from Land
Water, Vertical

Remaining in orbit for three days requires to provide food, water etc. for three days for the crew. Terminating one Orbit with "motors" shutdowned will be sufficient proof of orbit-ability because that means to orbit like a satellite or like the ISS. Three days would increase costs or investment without any progress for the access to space itself.

The ability to repeat the orbital flight isn't needed if the team has been meeting the conditions of the first XPRIZE before the orbital flight.

Docking ability meens to reduce the requirement to provide food etc. for the time in orbit. It meens to reduce the requirement to provide sufficient propellant for leaving the Orbit.

Too advanced? Why not modifying an XPRIZE2 compared to XPRIZE1? Docking-ability and Three-days-to-remain-ability could be two alternatives of one rule. Without docking-ability meeting the three-days-rule AND the altering-rule will increase the amount of propellant required and the expenditure for that amount of propellant - docking-ability will increase development activities and private technological progress, could be leading expenditure into development, technologies and investments reducing needed amount of propellant and this way causing more rapid progress of the public access to space.

Three orbits are much easier than three days - that's right. But there is to consider the orbit itself too. At a low orbit three terminations require only - let's say - 4.5 hours whereas the geostationary orbit requires really three days to terminate three orbits.

The 4.5 hours are needed for three terminations of that orbits the shuttle mission are taking place or the ISS is orbiting at.

The number of orbits does'nt depend on technology I suppose- except dockimg technologies.

In principle agreed - first time only those modifications needed to succeed in the next step of development should take place.

But we mustn't have in mind especially the point how expensive getting to the orbit is - the solution, the way out are the chances to be payed for getting to the orbit. The items to be unloaded for example colud be chances. And the XPRIZE Foundation explicictly says that one of the markets it has in mind are low cost satellites.

If there will be increasing numbers of transports, unloads and dockings in future the number of modifications will increase - up to that point at which changing the technology in the long term will reduce short term costs because of economies of scale or scope.

scaled has said they'll be going to orbit before people expect, we may see orbit in as few as 3 years, but i suspect it'll take them 5. armadillo will try to make an orbital craft once they finish the suborbital one, due to the relative ease with which they can scale up their vehicle, they may be able to do it before scaled. starchaser has orbital operations in their long-term plan, but i wouldn't expect to see it within 8-10 years. other than that, no teams really have any proclaimed plans for orbit.